Tag: Wyatt Cenac

Joining the likes of David Tennant, Alfred Molina, and some people who have been doing this thing for longer than a month, Ted Leo and Aimee Mann now have a podcast of their own. It’s called The Art Of Process, and Mann explained in an Instagram post t…

“Wyatt Cenac’s Problem Areas” just wrapped its first season last Friday, and HBO has already renewed the late-night documentary series for a second season. The show debuted earlier this spring, with the eponymous former “Daily S…

TBS has reversed its decision to renew the third season of “People of Earth,” the alien abduction comedy from creator David Jenkins and executive producer Conan O’Brien.

“Just got word last night: TBS has canceled People of Earth. Thank you to everyone who was a fan of the show and enjoyed its gentle, amiable sci-fi weirdness. It was an honor sharing this show with you. Let’s do it again soon. Love you all,” Jenkins tweeted Friday.

The show was renewed for a third season in September and had already been written. Jenkins said in a subsequent tweet that those episodes will not be shot.

The comedy, produced by Warner Horizon Television, starred comedian and actor Wyatt Cenac as a journalist who joined a support group for alien abductees. Season 1 averaged 4.3 million total viewers across multiple platforms.

It’s not unheard of for a network to cancel a show after a season renewal. HBO renewed its drama “Vinyl” for a second season soon after the show’s premiere in 2016, only to cancel it three months later.

Cenac has an HBO late-night series, “Wyatt Cenac’s Problem Areas,” which was renewed in May for a second season.

Just got word last night: TBS has cancelled People of Earth. Thank you to everyone who was a fan of the show and enjoyed its gentle, amiable sci-fi weirdness. It was an honor sharing this show with you. Let’s do it again soon. Love you all. https://t.co/QViyRi0RNF

HBO has already had a lot of success with giving a big platform to a former Daily Show correspondent with John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight, and now the premium cable network is looking to do it again by giving former Daily Show correspondent Wyatt Cenac his own show as well. This comes from Deadline, which says the…

“Daily Show” alums Wyatt Cenac and John Oliver are teaming for a new docuseries at HBO, the premium cabler announced Monday. “We’re thrilled to give Wyatt this opportunity to showcase his bold take on today’s social issues,” said Nina Rosenstein, executive vice president of HBO Programming. “His ability to tackle tough topics with humor and […]

Wyatt Cenac has been set to star in a 10-episode late-night comedic docuseries at HBO that John Oliver is executive producing. The network said the series will take a satirical look at social and cultural issues from the former Daily Show correspondent’s unique perspective. Rather than sit behind a desk, he will undertake a journey to understand some of the big issues of the moment and investigate real-world solutions. It is slated to bow in spring 2018.
Oliver and Cenac…

There’s nothing large about the satisfying and humane “People of Earth,” except the distance its alien characters have traveled to this planet full of mixed-up humans. It’s not a show that traffics in big moves or over-the-top jokes, but it’s all the more enjoyable for its devotion to dry, character-driven comedy. And despite being about… Read more »

“Fits and Starts” is appropriately titled. The directorial debut from Laura Terruso (who scripted “Hello, My Name Is Doris”), the film follows a pair of married writers – one wildly successful, one struggling – on a one-night trip from New York to Connecticut to attend a pretentious salon, only for one of them to go… Read more »

Aliens are hardly new on TV, especially when it comes to the comedic format. Extraterrestrials have lived among us (“3rd Rock From the Sun”), set up their own neighborhoods (“The Neighbors”), mixed with other species where they hung out in space (“Red Dwarf”) and even featured prominently on “Saturday Night Live” for several years (the Coneheads sketches back in the ’70s).Taking the concept and twisting it around to focus on those who have had alien encounters, however, is a pretty fresh take on the topic. That’s the entry point for TBS’s latest comedy “People of Earth.”

Viewers meet a group of misfits at an “experiencers” support group – run by former “SNL” star Ana Gasteyer – when Ozzie Graham (“The Daily Show’s” stoic-faced Wyatt Cenac) shows up to write an article on their experiences. The only catch is that as Ozzie is driving in from the big city to cover the group he has an encounter of his own, making him question his own jaded, preconceived notions.

Offbeat and inherently silly, the pilot goes on to explain that there are three kinds of aliens – big eyed creepers, lizard-like beings and good-looking Ryan Gosling types, but their real motivations and what they want with the humans they abduct become one of the show’s main mysteries by the end of the pilot.

It all adds up to an extremely quirky comedy that isn’t for the masses, but one that doesn’t take itself too seriously, either. “Daily Show” fans will inevitably love Cenac here as much as they did before he and Jon Stewart had a falling-out on that show; he’s an interesting choice for a lead and one that you can’t really turn away from. Between his sarcastic comedic timing and facial expressions he alone is enough to carry the show, but Ozzie’s personality is rounded out by characters that are inherently crazier than he is in order for his descent into a believer to work. Someone has to hold his hand and convince him he’s not losing his mind, after all.

Then there’s the creative team behind the series, which comes with its own form of accolades. Helping creator David Jenkins along are executive producers Conan O’Brien and Greg Daniels, who famously turned the American version of “The Office” into a long-running success story. If anyone could be trusted with writing for a mismatched group of characters that are forced into the same setting through one commonality it’s him.

On the other hand, although this is a rare instance for viewers to explore alien life from a new point of view, the support group premise itself isn’t a new one; Matthew Perry’s 2012 entry “Go On” was unable to find success bringing people together with the very same setup. Unfortunately it’s hard to see “People of Earth” having a different outcome given all the overly cartoonish characters viewers meet at the outset. Perhaps as they settle into themselves and gain some depth throughout the coming episodes that could change, but that’s a risky gamble for viewers who are quick to change the dial when faced with hundreds of options these days.

The bottom line? “People of Earth” earns kudos for going for the stars, but it also suffers from a failure to launch.

Without any outside help, humans are doing a pretty good job of making a mess of things on this planet, so it’s hard to put alien invasion high on the list of existential threats. The defanged nature of that premise, long a staple of sci-fi storytelling, accounts for much of the amiability of “People of… Read more »